A Glimpse Into the Future
by bitchinblackframedglasses
Summary: Harry finds Hermione's time-turner and messes with it, sending him briefly into the future. What he sees might just be important someday. Not an AU future. Oneshot.


_A Glimpse of the Future _

_(Third Year)_

"Harry, will you get _Achievements in Charming _out of my other bag for me? It should be in the Common Room- I can't believe I forgot it!" Hermione wailed. She was helping Ron do his homework in the library while Harry doodled aimlessly on a spare bit of parchment, his homework, for the moment, done. They all knew that Hermione didn't really need the book (she probably had the whole thing memorized), she was just being anxious. Harry, though, was glad to have something to do.

"Sure," He said, getting up and heading to Gryffindor Tower. The walk was short- most kids were hanging out on the grounds instead of doing homework, enjoying the nice weather. Harry would have loved to join them, but Hermione was insistent on the three of them being well ahead on work before exams hit. True to Hermione's word, however, her second bag was sitting against a chair. He didn't exactly know _why _and _how _Hermione carried around all those books to take all those classes, but there was no swaying her. Hermione, for such a smart person, however, was not very organized. Harry sifted through the massive amount of textbooks, trying to find the correct spell books when his fingers touched the chain of a necklace. Curious, he lifted it out. Attached to the chain was a circle, and in that, a small, flat disk that had an hourglass inside of it that was full of bright white sand. Sitting back on his heels, Harry did something very stupid; he messed around with a magical artifact that had unknown properties.

Idly, he twisted the flat, rotating disk in the middle back and forth, mostly away from his body, and even shook the necklace to watch the beads fall through the hourglass, thinking it was a harmless trinket. Suddenly, with the sound of a suction cup releasing, he was ripped from the present, buffeted by time on all sides. After a wild, bumpy ride, he landed on damp grass, sprawling when he was too dizzy to keep himself upright. Drawing his wand, Harry got shakily to his feet, looking around. He was outside of Hogwarts- directly outside of the Great Hall in fact, looking through the windows like he had just last year to watch the sorting. That was what was happening inside, even. However, things were different. _Very _different.

Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen. McGonagall was sitting in his place at the head of the table, looking a lot older than she did now. The only teacher that looked familiar at the staff table was her. The rest were wizards and witches that he'd never seen before. One even looked a bit like Neville, but that was ridiculous, right? The doors opened to the Great Hall and the usual scared line of first years was making their way up to the sorting hat and stool. A lot less wary now, Harry pressed himself closer to the glass, trying to understand. The children waiting to be sorted looked like his grade, but yet they obviously weren't. The distinct blond hair that he _thought _belonged to Draco Malfoy didn't. The child with the shining hair certainly looked like him, had the same upright posture, the same smugness about him- but it was not Malfoy. A girl who could have been related to Hermione was talking excitedly in hushed tones to-

No, that couldn't be possible. Harry squinted, making sure he could see correctly. In line to be sorted was the spitting image of himself- the messy black hair, the glasses, the green eyes- all that was missing was his scar. Harry looked quickly at the rest of the students sitting at the house tables. The trademark Weasley twins were nowhere to be seen. However, sitting at the Gryffindor table—_was __**another **__Harry. _Impossible as it may have seemed, Harry couldn't take his eyes off of his second double. On closer examination, the older Harry didn't have green eyes- but brown ones. He didn't wear glasses either, and had a bit more confidence to him that the first-year Harry didn't have. The older Harry looked just like James Potter. Before Harry's mind had a chance to completely explode in shock from seeing what it had just seen, he was yanked back into time. Harry didn't know just how lucky he'd gotten. The necklace he thought was just a trinket was actually a time-turner, one of the most dangerous inventions in wizard-kind. Having shook it, flipped it a million different ways and flicked it repeatedly to watch the grains of sand fall, Harry had made the time-turner default and malfunction, sending him careening forward in time for a split second, and then shooting back to his present time, as if he was attached to a giant boomerang.

In the moment it took Harry to blink, he was back on the floor of the Common Room as if nothing had changed, a little out of breath and very confused, but unharmed. However, Hermione was standing over him, looking furious. "Harry Potter, what did you _do?" _She hissed, snatching the time-turner back and resetting it before stuffing it into the pocket of her robes and out of sight. Too shocked to reply, Harry just blinked at her. Hermione huffed, gave him a hand up, and started to march him back to the library. Halfway there, she stopped by a tapestry, hands on her hips. "What. Did. You. Do?" She asked again, and Harry opened his mouth but found that there were no words to explain what had just happened to him. Hermione sighed, her war-like face disappearing. "You found my time-turner, Harry. When used _correctly_, it lets the wearer travel back and forth in time. Its how I've been getting to all my classes this year. It has rules though, which you broke. Where you seen by anyone? Are you sure?" Her voice got steely again as she interrogated Harry, who simply shook his head when necessary. With the explanation he'd been given, Harry began to rule out the idea that he was crazy. He began to wonder if he'd simply messed with the time-turner too much and ended up being thrown into and out of time.

"I was at Hogwarts," He heard himself saying. "I was watching a sorting, but things weren't correct. I mean, Dumbledore wasn't there, and- you know what? It doesn't matter. I wasn't supposed to see it anyway, right?" Harry asked, but Hermione frowned, shaking her head.

"Describe it anyway." She ordered, and Harry complied. He told her about seeing kids that looked remotely like his fellow third-years; especially the two Harry's he'd seen. He described how McGonagall hadn't been running the sorting, and had been seated in the Headmaster's chair. Even though it seemed crazy, he even told her about seeing who he thought was Neville at the staff table.

"So, you see? Not important." Harry said, but Hermione looked thoughtful now.

"I'm not sure, Harry. You might have seen something important in the future."

* * *

><p><strong>So, there you have it, another one-shot I dreamed up at work. Ever since I read the passage in the POA where Hermione is describing the laws of time to Harry (especially when he wants to grab Peter Pettigrew from Hagrid's shack), I wanted to write a one-shot of Harry breaking those rules, just to do it. I settled on him breaking laws rather than possibly killing himself because that is a very Harry-esque thing to do; break laws. <strong>

**Also….I now have a blog! It's linked to and largely hinted to on my profile page if you are really interested. It will have real time (hopefully) updates of what I'm working on and snippets of stuff I like. No obligation to check it out…but seriously, do it- I'll update it a lot more than I will my fanficitons. You guys deserve it!**

**blackorchestrafreak**


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